Zambia Cannot Spend Another Five Years Fighting Its Political Enemies-Linda Banks

Zambia Cannot Spend Another Five Years Fighting Its Political Enemies

By Linda Banks

The imprisonment of Brian Mundubile and Makebi Zulu is becoming more than a criminal case. It is a test of whether Zambia’s second Hichilema administration can govern those who opposed it as citizens rather than permanent adversaries.

There is something profoundly dispiriting about watching a government begin a fresh five-year mandate apparently still consumed by the politics of yesterday.

Mr Hakainde Hichilema has given himself another term in which to govern Zambia. Whatever arguments continue over the conduct of the August election, the declared result gave him 2,965,326 votes, while Brian Mundubile allegedly received 1,856,217 to approximately 37.9 per cent of the valid vote. (VoteRights⁠)

That second figure deserves considerably more attention than Zambia’s increasingly poisonous political discourse allows.

1,856,217 Zambians.

Those people did not evaporate when the President was sworn in. They did not cease to be Zambians because their candidate lost. They remain citizens whose taxes will finance this administration, whose children will live under its policies and whose confidence or alienation will help determine the stability of the Republic.

That is why the treatment of Mundubile and his running mate, Makebi Zulu, matters far beyond the two men themselves.

Police have formally charged the pair with seditious practices, in addition to the treason proceedings they were already facing, and they have been held at Mukobeko Maximum Correctional Facility. Off course the state is entitled to investigate genuine threats to national security. Equally, allegations of treason and sedition are among the gravest powers available to a government, and precisely because they are so grave they demand transparent evidence, scrupulous due process and an independent judicial process rather than political theatre. (ZNBC⁠)

That distinction is fundamental, a democratic government does not prove its strength by demonstrating how efficiently it can imprison opponents. It proves its strength by showing that even its fiercest opponents remain protected by the same law.

From Lungu to “the Boys”

There is an uncomfortable historical rhythm developing in Zambia.

Hichilema’s first term unfolded against an extraordinarily bitter relationship with former President Edgar Lungu. Lungu himself complained of police harassment and restrictions on his movements, allegations the government denied. Their political antagonism did not end with Lungu’s death in South Africa on 5 June 2025. It continued through an extraordinary dispute between his family and the Zambian government over his remains and funeral arrangements, eventually travelling through the South African courts. In June 2026, South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal ruled in favour of Lungu’s family in the burial dispute. (BBC Feeds⁠)

Think about the symbolism of that for a moment.

Zambia had reached a point where a political feud appeared incapable even of respecting the boundary between public power and the grave. A former president’s mortal remains became the subject of litigation between his family and the state long after political argument should have surrendered to human dignity.

And now Lungu is gone, yet Zambia appears to have found new protagonists for the same exhausting confrontation.

Mundubile and Zulu “the Boys”, as they became known to many supporters ;proved capable of drawing substantial political support. Whatever President Hichilema or the UPND thinks of them, nearly 1.86 million votes were cast for the Mundubile presidential ticket according to the declared result. (See Zambia⁠)

That is not a WhatsApp group. It is not a troublesome Facebook page that can simply be blocked and forgotten. It is a substantial political constituency.

And herein lies the danger for any government tempted to confuse electoral victory with national unanimity.

You cannot imprison your way to national unity

Zambia’s population is projected by ZamStats at just over 23 million people in 2026. (Zamstats⁠) A president therefore governs considerably more people than those who voted for him.

This is elementary democracy, yet it is frequently forgotten after elections.

The presidency does not confer ownership of the Republic upon the winning party. It creates stewardship of a country containing winners, losers, supporters, sceptics and opponents alike.

Perhaps the simplest analogy is the household.

A stepmother entering a family in which children already exist has a choice. She can regard those children as inconvenient evidence of the life that preceded her and spend her days competing with them, disciplining them and reminding everybody who now occupies the house. Or she can recognise that the family cannot flourish while half of it feels unwanted, and turn those children into allies in building a functioning home.

Government is infinitely more complicated, but the principle is remarkably similar.

President Hichilema does not need Brian Mundubile to adore him. He does not need Makebi Zulu to praise him. He does not need 1.86 million opposition voters suddenly to become UPND converts.

He needs a Zambia in which those citizens can disagree with him without concluding that the institutions of their country have become weapons pointed in their direction.

And the opposition bears responsibilities too. Political leaders are not exempt from criminal law merely because they command large followings. If prosecutors possess admissible evidence of serious criminal conduct, that evidence should be tested before an independent court and the accused afforded every protection guaranteed by law. Political popularity cannot constitute immunity.

But neither should the vocabulary of national security become a substitute for ordinary democratic contest.

That is the balance Zambia desperately needs.

Hichilema should remember what political persecution feels like

There is another reason this moment carries such uncomfortable historical weight, Hichilema himself knows the inside of a prison cell.

In 2017, under Edgar Lungu’s presidency, he was arrested and charged with treason after the now notorious presidential-motorcade incident. He spent approximately four months in detention before the charge was dropped. His imprisonment attracted international condemnation. (The Washington Post⁠)

Few African presidents therefore possess a more personal understanding of what happens when treason law collides with political rivalry.

That experience could become one of Hichilema’s greatest democratic assets.

It could teach Zambia that suffering injustice does not entitle a leader to reproduce the political culture from which he once suffered. It can instead create the rare statesman who understands why institutions must be stronger than grudges.

The question confronting Zambia is therefore larger than Mundubile and Zulu.

It is whether political power will continue operating as a relay race in which yesterday’s prisoner eventually acquires the keys to tomorrow’s prison.

If so, Zambia will never escape its cycle, five years are terribly easy to waste. A presidential term sounds long until government begins.

Five years can disappear astonishingly quickly amid arrests, court appearances, political quarrels, press conferences, accusations, counter-accusations and the endless mobilisation of state machinery against perceived enemies.

Meanwhile, ordinary Zambians still wake each morning requiring jobs, affordable food, reliable electricity, functioning hospitals, decent schools, investment and an economy capable of transforming the country’s extraordinary mineral wealth into ordinary household security.

That is where presidential energy ought ultimately to be measured, not by how many critics can be subdued.Not by how many political adversaries can be prosecuted.And certainly, not by how many arguments inherited from Edgar Lungu’s era can be kept alive.

But by whether a child born in Chipata, Kasama, Mongu, Mansa, Livingstone or Lusaka has a materially better country five years from now.

Brian Mundubile and Makebi Zulu’s cases should therefore proceed according to law, with the state required to substantiate its allegations and the accused afforded due process, access to lawyers and an independent court. If evidence supports prosecution, it should be tested openly according to law. If it does not, the coercive power of the state should not become a substitute for evidence.That is not weakness,it is constitutional government.

President Hichilema has already defeated opponents at the ballot box according to the declared result. His greater challenge now is considerably harder: to govern a nation containing millions of people who did not vote for him without making them feel that they live in somebody else’s country.

The President has another five years, but Zambia cannot afford to watch them disappear into another five-year quarrel.